What's wrong at CNN

In April, as Republicans were throwing their weight behind Mitt Romney and the lengthy, combative presidential primary process was drawing to a close, CNN’s senior vice president and Washington bureau chief Sam Feist presented his staff with a “CNN Half-time Election Report.”

The four-minute video, shown at the quarterly staff meeting, was a highlight reel of CNN debates, primary night coverage, and interviews interspersed with laudatory reviews. CNN, the video reminded its staff, had hosted more debates than any other network and landed some of the most significant interviews in the election cycle.

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“And It’s Only Halftime…” the video concluded.

In fact, the scoreboard, according to many inside and outside the network, doesn’t look nearly as good as the video suggests.

CNN, the founder of the cable news genre, is now registering its lowest ratings since the first Gulf War. In the second quarter of 2012, the network attracted fewer viewers than at any time in the past 21 years, it was reported Tuesday. An average of 446,000 people now watch CNN’s primetime programming while a mere 319,000 watch its daytime programming — declines from 2011 that are at least twice as severe as those suffered at Fox News and MSNBC.

Primetime programming is described by media insiders and academics as lackluster and stale. Several staffers at the network complain of low morale and an absence of editorial leadership. Earlier this month — in a further sign that all is not well — the network announced that it intended to cancel poorly rated politics show “John King USA.”

One former executive said CNN faces an “identity crisis.”

While CNN struggles to make 24-hour news compelling, its competitors at Fox News and MSNBC have redefined the industry. They eschewed traditional, straight-forward newsgathering in favor of partisan, personality driven analysis — a model that is increasingly successful in an era of hyperpartisan politics, but one that CNN has resisted even as its ratings continue their slow and steady decline.

There is now, according to industry experts, a very real possibility that without a coherent strategy, the only nonpartisan network left on cable could become largely irrelevant to the national conversation.

“News has become much more personality driven and much more opinionated since CNN launched 32 years ago, and CNN has had difficulty moving in that direction,” Brad Adgate, senior vice president of research at Horizon Media, told POLITICO. “They move in fits and starts, and they don’t do a very good job of it.”